Event Detail Information

Event Detail Information

Sponsored in part by the Francis P. Rohlen Visiting Artists Fund/College of Fine and AppliedArts, the Lorado Taft Lectureship on Art Fund/College of Fine and Applied Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency

Born in rural Bakenberg, South Africa in 1975 and now based in Amsterdam, internationally acclaimed artist Moshekwa Langa uses everyday objects and organic materials to create whimsical, map-like collages and imaginary landscapes that link disparate things.

Immersive and topographical, Langa's poetic installations emerge from his intimate connections to people and places, often lost or left behind. Though free of distinct destinations, they are navigable terrains, adeptly exploiting the aesthetic and accidental offerings of his chosen materials. Langa "draws" with yarn and string, and delights in the abundance of small colorful toys interspersed among fanciful outcrops of books and LPs. The beet juice, salt crystals, wine, coffee, and tea with which he paints possess an organic materiality that is eternally giving, and in Langa's hands, capable of extraordinary beauty. Collaged adjacencies clipped and created anew become layered striations and fragmented terrains of Dutch tulip fields, South African thorn trees, mirages, and thresholds of interior, mystical spaces. Indeed, Langa's psycho-geographical mark-making throws into relief the limits of place-based identity, African or otherwise, and the liberating power to envison the spaces in between.